He cleared his throat. “Pardon me?”
“I’m tied up,” I said again.
“We discussed putting you on retainer,” he said.
“I’d like that, very much.”
“But?”
“But I’m tied up-”
Now it was his turn to cut me off. “Retainer means you drop everything for us.”
“Ordinarily-”
He gave me a long, loud sigh. “We’ll get back to you, Elstrom,” he said and hung up.
Maybe he would, when pigs flew. Right now, the only things flying were my prospects for further income from that client, right out the window.
The cops came out in less than five minutes.
“When’s the last time you were here?” the former porcupine asked.
“You mean, do I know how long the door glass might have been broken?”
He nodded.
“Not long; a day at most.”
“We can’t tell if anything is missing,” he said. “Best you look around, and best you get that window glass replaced.”
They left like rockets.
Other than my financial future vaporizing, the morning had transpired magnificently. Leo had had no keys when I hauled him out of the abandoned bungalow. Yet he’d used a key when he snuck home for food. If he’d left his keys or anything else in the empty house, the cops had it by now. A phantom burglar was ideal for explaining away anything of Leo’s they might find there.
I’d also had another objective for my faked burglary: bait.
I drove to the hardware store for a new lock and glass for the back door. Next up was the signage shop in a suburb south of Rivertown. The rush order I’d phoned in, for two outdoor-quality signs, was ready. Back at Leo’s, I drove both into his small front yard. I’d gotten the idea from Robinson, recalling Tebbins’s little side business.
The signs were big, the same size Realtors used. The first was ordinary, and read ELSTROM SECURITY SYSTEMS. AFFORDABLE PROTECTION. I’d been more creative with the second: BURGLED ONCE? SHAME ON THE THIEF! BURGLED TWICE? SHAME ON THE HOMEOWNER… FOR NOT USING AN ELSTROM SECURITY SYSTEM!
I went inside and installed the new lock and door glass.
My tool bag contained small spools of different-colored wire, black electrical tape, and the doorbell I planned to hook up one day at the turret. I hoped they looked like the components of a security system. I left it on the kitchen table and went home, to think about my vaporized financial future and wait for someone to call.
Twenty-eight
Someone called less than an hour after I got home.
“I’m inquiring about your security systems.” He spoke smoothly, but there was an element of rough behind it. He was a Chicago guy, probably South Side.
“Yes?” I asked, a businessman anxious for clients.
“I’d like to look at a current job.” Definitely, he was smooth.
“I’ve just begun installing systems. I’ve got a friend, see, who was recently burgled-”
“Oh, no,” he said, with almost no inflection. “Was anything taken?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’re not sure?”
“My friend’s gone, off on a trip with his mother. I found the door glass broken. Lucky for him I’ve been reading up about security systems, what with the economy and all, and me needing work of any sort. I offered to rig his place right away, so long as I could use it as a showplace. He wasn’t crazy about the showplace part, but he needs a system fast. I’m already hard at work and only came home to make a sandwich for lunch later.”
I paused for breath.
“You think nothing was taken?” he asked. An ordinary buyer wouldn’t have asked such a thing.
“He was big-time lucky,” I said. “Now I’m rushing to get the system installed.”
“I suppose the police will keep an eye on his place until you’re finished?” It was another question asked too smoothly.
I made a fake laugh and threw in a freebie. “Not a chance. He lives in Rivertown.” The information wasn’t necessary. My caller knew where Leo lived; he’d been on his block, probably watching as I put up the signs.
With Wozanga gone, unaccounted for, likely enough the caller was his employer.
“Yes, everybody knows about Rivertown,” he said, rushing now. “I’d like to see the installation.”
“I’ll be back there in fifteen minutes.”
He had the presence of mind to ask for the address, as though he weren’t already parked nearby.
I had the presence of mind to not laugh at the charade as I gave it to him.
He got out of a black S-Class Mercedes, smoked windows, top of the line, before I’d even slid out of the Jeep. He knew whom to expect, from watching the house.
He was silver haired, wore a dark wool topcoat, and had a ten-thousand-dollar gold Rolex around his wrist. Or maybe it cost more. It had been light-years since I’d priced new Rolexes. I’d worn a used one once, but that was back in the day. I’d sold it after I’d become a news item.
Before I could extend my hand, he put his in his coat pockets like mine might be dirty. He gave me a nod, but not a name. It was just as well. The name would have been false. I’d already memorized his license plate, but that wouldn’t matter either. Guys with his kind of dough leased their Mercedeses, so they could switch them out when the floor mats got crudded up.
I took him around back. “It’s a modest job, you’ll see, but it’s a start.”
“Burglary, you mentioned,” he said, when I unlocked the kitchen door.
“Through the back door here.”
“But nothing was taken?” Again he asked the question that shouldn’t have mattered to him.
“Maybe I just don’t know.”
He’d brushed past me to step into Leo’s bedroom. Right off, he knew to duck beneath the last of the psychedelic squadron dangling from the ceiling. He’d already gotten a description of the room, from his man Wozanga.
“My friend told me some of the things he’s worried might have been stolen.”
It was like tossing chum off a fishing boat. He spun around. “Jewelry?” he asked, but something in his monotone made him sound like he thought it was what I wanted to hear.
The thought of someone lifting Ma Brumsky’s rosaries was a laugh. “Sure. And the flat screens, the camera, stereo…”
He wasn’t interested. He walked to Leo’s closet, looking down at what might have been behind the clothes. “Nothing else?”
“Like what?” I asked, a doofus.
“I don’t know; other things,” he said, fingering one of Leo’s more outlandish tropical shirts, a medley of colors that should never have been joined. “Flamboyant fellow, your friend.”
“One of the neighbors saw a suspicious-looking guy hanging around.” It was more chum.
His fingers froze on the sleeve of Leo’s shirt. “What did he look like?” he asked, without turning around.
I gave him a vague description of Wozanga, lying just a few hundred yards down the block, awaiting a ton of concrete.
He could have been an excellent poker player, or there was the chance he hadn’t known the dead detective. “That’s it?” he asked, turning to look around the room, at the desk, the dresser, even the long curtains Ma had made from a hard-to-find pattern of dancing ducks. “Just a vague description of a big man?”
“Any questions about what I plan to do in the other rooms?” I asked, chumming for the third time.
He beat me to the door. “Good idea. Let’s look around.”
No doubt, the man was looking for something. Passing through the kitchen, he gestured at my tool bag. “When will you be done?”
“Very soon.”
He stopped in the dining room. It offered a view of Ma’s bedroom.
“Mind if we talk about what you’re planning to do in here?” He pointed at the wide window that faced the bricks of the bungalow next door. That’s what windows in brick bungalows in Rivertown mostly did; they looked out on more bricks.